Merchants to Multinationals

This book examines the evolution of multinational trading companies from the eighteenth century to the present day. During the Industrial Revolution, British merchants established overseas branches which became major trade intermediaries and subsequently engaged in foreign direct investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

an innovative contribution to British economic history ... also provides insight into emerging economics, which have often been neglected by Western scholars ... Merchants is a clear and coherent analysis of an elusive subject. It is nicely structured., provides business historians with a study that is impressive both as a work of synthesis and as a reinterpretation of the contribution of merchant enterprise to Britain's international economic performance., new light on the vexed issues of the relationship between the City and the domestic economy, on the nature of overseas investment and imperialism, on the nature of British management and on the role of trust and knowledge in economic performance., Jones is an authority on the history of multinational enterprise ... In the present volume, he turns his attention to British traders. And, what a rich subject this turns out to be. ... an archive-based work that provides information not available elsewhere., Jones is superb is showing the variety; he not only discusses the traders but also their long-standing and complex external business relationships. ... Jones is excellent in tracing the multiple problems British trading companies faced in the years of the First World War, the 1920s, the 1930s, and of the Second World War.

Geoffrey Jones is Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School